French composition

Emma Wolukau-WanambwaNarratives of La Croisière Noire

Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa used her residency at the FNAGP and Villa Vassilieff in June-July 2016 to engage with the Smith-Lesouëf library. She drew on this col­lec­tion in order to con­tex­tu­alize the research that she has been pur­suing since 2014 into the archive of an event known pop­u­larly in French as La Croisière Noire.

Described var­i­ously as a “raid”, an “ex­pe­di­tion”, a “mis­sion, a “quest”, an “ad­ven­ture” and, on one notable occa­sion, as “the blood­less con­quest of a con­ti­nent”, La Croisière Noire (“The Black Cruise”) was the name given to the “trip” orga­nized by French car man­u­fac­turer André Citröen, during which a team of 17 white European men drove eight spe­cially designed off-road vehi­cles 30,000 km across the African con­ti­nent.